test-drb July 2020

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

148 participants
104 discussions

by a.carlini＠ntlworld.com

I have three AlphaServer 2100 systems in storage in the UK (Oxfordshire). The storage, however, is due to be demolished (soon, but no fixed date). I won't have room to store these three systems, so if anyone would be interested in offering them a home, then please get in touch! I can probably get some pictures in the next day or two. These systems were SMP Alphas and could sport as many as 4 CPUs. I'm not sure of the configuration of these systems but I can probably find that out soon. They have not been run since ~2003 so they may be in need of some TLC. OTOH they are not rusted to death so you have a chance of getting them back to life. Just so you know what you might be dealing with these systems are about: 700mm H x 430mm W x 810mm L. I can't find the weight in any of my references right now but they are very heavy. Three people can move them up a slight slope with some effort but you would not successfully lift it into a car (assuming that it would fit). I'm planning to dismantle them to move them (i.e. remove PSU/PSUs etc. until they are light enough to move). A tail-lift would probably be the sane way to go (and is, indeed, how they got to their current location. I'm hoping that someone can step forward and offer one or more of these machines a new home. Please contact me off-list (once you're sure you understand what you are getting into :-)). Antonio -- Antonio Carlini antonio at acarlini.com

2 years, 7 months

H7821 power supply in MicroVAX 3100, SCSI disk enclosures and others

by cctalk＠beyondthepale.ie

The recent discussion on BSC protocol prompted me to dig out my Microvax 3100 with DSH32 synchronous serial interface. It had been idle in storage for several years and it wouldn't power up, only giving a brief flash on the diagnostic LEDs and a quick twitch of the fans. There was a slight smell, like the stale air that comes out of a deflating tyre. I took out the H7821 power supply and found that five identical brown 1800uF 25V electrolytic capacitors on the output side had leaked. The SCSI disk enclosure where the machine's system disk lives required several power cycles to get it to run at all and it died as soon as the disk tried to spin up. It turned out to also contain a H7821 power supply which had a similar issue with the same five brown capacitors, although not as extensive as in the main unit. I found a second disk enclosure which had seen little use and grabbed the power supply out of that to put in the MicroVAX. It worked well enough to test with but there was a ring of goo around the bottom of one of the brown capacitors which was worst affected in the other units. Time to order a batch of replacement capacitors and figure out what else has been damaged. While it is not the worst I have seen, access to these power supplies for repairs is quite difficult and it is really difficult to debug them safely while they are running with the cover off :-( If anyone has anything with H7821 power supplies in them, I suggest checking on these capacitors. If anything with these power supplies is in storage, I suggest ensuring it is stored the normal way up as this should limit the ability of the goo to escape and spread around the power supply. And there I was thought I was being safe enough by removing the nicad battery packs some years ago... Regards, Peter Coghlan.

2 years, 9 months

PDP-11/05 microcode dump?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Mattis Lind > Thanks Noel for sorting this out. Eh, de nada. But thank you. >> I wonder if the ucode in the two versions is identical? The uROM chip >> numbers should give it, (if they are the same on both versions, albeit >> in different locations on the board), but I have yet to check. Does >> anyone happen to know? OK, so the situation here is pretty complicated. To start with / make things worse, that CPU uses lots of PROMs. Lots and lots and lots and lots of PROMs. For the data paths board (M7260), both major versions appear to contain the same PROMs (going by the DEC part numbers), but the chip location (Exx) numbers are all different. For the control board (M7261), the C, E ('early' version) and F ('late' version) etch revisions each contain mostly the same PROMs, but apparently with slight differences between the sets of PROMs in each (as reflected in different DEC part numbers). For details see: http://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11/05#Control_PROMs to which I have just added all the gory details. As to getting the contents of all of them dumped in machine-readable form - oi vey! >> on the earlier version (prints for that version are in the GT40 prints >> online It turns out that I have hard-copy prints for the "C" etch revision of the M7261, which do not yet appear to be online; the GT40 prints have the "E" etch revision. I will scan the pages for that revision of the board, and put them up 'soon'. (I'm not doing the whole print set, it's about 1" thick, and most of them are for other things anyway, like MM11-L memory, etc.) Noel

3 years, 4 months

ISO earl TI DSP kits

by aek＠bitsavers.org

CHM doesn't seem to have much early DSP stuff in the collection Does anyone have any of the TMS32010/20/30 or C1x/2x/3x hw/sw kicking around? Other than the docs I've scanned there doesn't seem to be much on the web either.

3 years, 11 months

Font for DEC indicator panels

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Toby Thain > To get closer I'd need better images of the panels. Hi, I borrowed a DEC inlay from someone (a KA10 CPU bay) and scanned a chunk of it (as much as I could fit into my A4 scanner :-) at 200 dpi: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/jpg/KACPUPanel.jpg I have a TC08 inlay, but it's currently being used in my QSIC display (until we can get the RKV11-F/RPV11-D inlay done :-), and I didn't want to yank it out. As far as I can tell, it's the same font on the two of them. > the closest I know of off the top of my head is Akzidenz Grotesk. The Akzidenz Grotesk Medium is indeed very, very close (other than the zero). Do you happen to know if that font available for use in non-commercial settings? Thanks! Noel

4 years

Pro 350 Print Set

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

Manx lists MP-01394-00 as the Field Maintenance Print Set for the DEC Professional 350. I can't find this online and I was wondering if anyone has a scan of it by any chance? Thanks Rob

4 years, 1 month

DECnet/E Y2K bugfix

by paulkoning＠comcast.net

I just made some small changes to the DECnet/E event logger application to fix a Y2K problem. (More precisely, a Y2K.003 problem). https://github.com/pkoning2/decstuff This is for RSTS V10.1. Just drop the new evtlog.tsk into [0,16]. paul

4 years, 2 months

UniSys ClearPath OS/2200 Express?

by Kevin＠RawFedDogs.net

Classic Computer Fans, Technically this isn't a classic OS, but I suspect its lineage goes back far enough to be of interest. Has anyone tried out UniSys ClearPath OS/2200 Express? https://www.UniSys.com/offerings/clearpath-forward/clearpath-forward-produc… I normally don't run Windows at home, but have set up a Windows 7 VM to try it out. It includes a few PDFs, including basic startup and shutdown procedures. I haven't found any intro to OS/2200 type docs yet. If anyone knows of any, please let me know. It looks like it could be an interesting system, if I can ever learn my way around. -- Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.Lassie.xyz http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.

4 years, 2 months

Altair 8800 reproduction

by gregory.beat＠gmail.com

?Tom, Grant moved shortly after this Kit offering, over a decade ago. That kit is OVER (Grant no longer offering). Participate in the S100computers Group: http://www.s100computers.com/ Join the List at Google Group: S100Computers https://groups.google.com Grant special ordered the metal fabrication, at that time, from the original metal fabricators (Optima, $$), who have gone thru mergers & off-shoring. Mike Douglas looked into that chassis possibility ? but was cost prohibitive (>$300). Mike Douglas offers BOTH the Altair Clone (you referenced) AND the Altair 8800c Kits (November 2018). This case he had fabricated is a close look-a-like, but Lighter in weight. Still the case alone is $300 . This case does not have the internal Optima sub chassis (weight) and rails. ?https://deramp.com/altair_8800c.html Suggest you look at Mike?s multiple vintage computer offerings (web site) AND https://deramp.com/ His YouTube Videos (deramp5113). Here is the Altair 8800c, shown November 2018 https://youtu.be/Q5LjkL5b4n8 greg w9gb == From: Tom Hunter <ccth6600 at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion? <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Altair 8800 reproduction About 10 years ago Grant Stockly in Anchorage Alaska produced high quality MITS Altair 8800 reproductions in kit form. The website still exists: http://www.altairkit.com/ I have tried to contact Grant but did not get a reply. Does anyone know if these kits are still available? Is Grant on this forum? Alternatively is somebody else making complete Altair 8800 kits? I have found people making individual boards but not a complete kit. There is also the Altair 8800 clone which is based on a PIC microcontroller emulating the entire original Altair 8800. It is cute but not the real thing. Thanks Tom Hunter Sent from iPad Air

4 years, 2 months

Any interest in "newer" hardware, software?

by boris＠summitclinic.com

Have been going through my shop and storage room trying to see what can get rid of and wasn't aware of how much old electronics and computers have accumulated over last 50 years. Should note that this process has been at insistance of my wife as a lot of these boxes just got moved whenever I moved and much of this stuff haven't looked at for decades. Was about to toss a 1987 box containing DOS 3.3 but then figured someone might want it. Have a couple of XT systems kicking around somewhere but in 1987 I'd discovered the Mac and considered 68000 processor a far superior architecture as it was an easy transition >from someone who'd spent most of their time programming on a PDP-11. Also have early Mac software, hundreds of 3.5" disks which are primarily taking up space and all of them have been copied to HDD's and now run my Mac code under Basilisk2 was faster than it used to run on my MacIIvx (of which I have a couple). Also managed to find, in no particular order, a couple of C64's, a TI99, ZX81, VIC20 and an 8" floppy drive with full documentation that I faintly recall buying at a surplus electronics place in Seattle. Also found a box of old Univac cards which appear to be DTL with individual transistors and then go on to having DTL IC's as well as some old IBM cards. Used to pull transistors and diodes off these to build my own circuits 50 years ago. Now, with storage being so ridiculously cheap haven't even come close to making a dent in the capacity of a 256 Gb SD card in my Samsung S8 handheld supercomputer of which I'm using the camera function to create high res images of what I'm going through. Also have lots of PC motherboards starting with XT's and progressing upwards. Never liked 80286 and so only collected from 80386 and higher. Seem to have lots of various parallel port adapters, disk interfaces as well as parallel and serial port boards. Was planning on using these as dedicated processors for data acquisition but found that technology progressed faster than my getting around to use them and it's a lot simpler to either use Phidget's SBC with various sensors for environmental monitoring or a much less power hungry Parallax Propellar chip for more demanding data acquisition applications. (Haven't let my wife know how many of newer systems I have stashed away but they take up way less room than old hardware). Do also have a couple of PDP 11/23 systems which I'll probably have to part with as I haven't used then in last 15 years. Also have a number of unibus boards which haven't run into yet but won't be using them. Lots of old computer books as well which would be nice to keep but likely have most of documentation in digital form and usually back up all important pdf files to separate drives. The PC stuff is most voluminous and, if there's any interest, can post images of what I have on my web site. Only components I've tested are disk drives of which most work but SCSI drives are all old and a number of them didn't take kindly to be powered off after running for years and being moved from Vancouver to Kamloops. Boris Gimbarzevsky

4 years, 3 months

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test-drb July 2020